


The End

by IrksomeIrene



Series: Gwen [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Death, Family Loss, Fantasy, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Loss, Loss of Parent(s), Minor Character Death, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Original Character Death(s), Past Character Death, Science Fiction & Fantasy, dealing with death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 07:53:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15769800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrksomeIrene/pseuds/IrksomeIrene
Summary: An exploration of grief.





	The End

**Author's Note:**

> I somehow ended up writing this instead of the fics I'm supposed to be updating some time this century. Feel free to murder me in my sleep.

The End.

Gwen had seen these words printed in elegant, painstakingly scrawled ink at the end of nearly every book her mother and father had ever given to her and heard them ring out at the end of every single bedtime story she had ever managed to stay awake to the end of. Now, curled up on her bed, dressed in fine black with a book in her lap and her nurse maid crying in the other room, Gwen traced these letters with contemplative fingers. Gwen liked to think. She liked to think about grand puzzles no academic masters had yet solved (“What turns the world?” “What brings drought?” “How do the stars hang in the night sky but vanish in the day?”) and about neglected every day things (“Where does the slug call home?” “Does the one eared mouse in the kitchen mind his missing ear?” “Does the tree she likes to climb in get hungry? Does it tire of her scrambling about in its limbs?”). She liked sword play and riding nearly as much but thinking had been her first passion. Her mother had always understood this, perhaps because, Gwen only now began to realize, her mother was rather the same way. They would sit in outward silence, Gwen staring off into infinity, her mother reading or working fine embroidery, speaking only every once in a great while to ask a question that seemed to come from nowhere. Sometimes the answer was simple and the silence soon fell again, other times it was not and they talked easily for hours, more and more questions and thoughts piling up with each new answer or idea.

No one but her mother could stand her long, unyielding silence. They did not understand the babbling brooks and stormy seas of mind that filled the silence for her. They did not understand the comfort her mind gave her or the unending curiosity within her. Not even her father understood. All too often, when he was about at her mother's side, her mother would present Gwen with a question or a puzzle or an idea (Gwen liked these most of all because she knew her mother was supposed to present these ideas as fact but the queen always did it with a little rise in the right corner of her lips, a secret little glimmer in her eyes, and far, far too much innocence to mean anything but utter mischief. Gwen lived for these ideas her mother presented to her with the express intention of having the child question them utterly and to devastating effect.) only for her father to chastise the grown woman with a gentle “she's much too young for that, my dear.” Gwen strove each and every time to prove her dearly loved father wrong. But adults, with their mind set in stone, did not see her answers as right or even worth while.

“This is simply the way things are. No use thinking about it.”

It frustrated Gwen so badly, she would occasionally throw fiery, shameless fits. Her mother did not approve and scolded her for them always, but she understood her daughter. The queen understood her daughter in ways no one else seemed capable.

And now she was dead.

Which brought Gwen to “The End.” She could not recall a single story where “The End” seemed a truly appropriate phrase. Her mother and her father told her very different sorts of stories. Her father told her the gentle stories of his gentle lands. They ended all quite happily and simply with a princess marrying a prince for duty and love (either upon first sight or growing after their acquaintance). Gwen was of the unspoken opinion that “and they lived happily ever after” was quite the laziest (and most boring) way to possibly end a story. Her mother told her the not so gentle stories from her not so gentle lands. These stories spoke to Gwen and felt quite a bit more real to her. Mistakes were not magically unwritten with true love's kiss. Husbands were not always kind, wives were not always sweet. And even taking every right step, doing everything as told and taught, did not always end well for characters. Many good people died in these tales. Many bad people lived. Of course, they were not all dark and dreary. In fact, most weren't. But there were good lessens in them. Don't always trust a man because he is beautiful and appears kind, his sweet words might be poison. Don't always scorn the filthy beggars or roughly spoken strangers. Mistakes will always happen, there's no use hiding from their outcomes. These stories were stories worth _thinking_ about.

But even her mother's stories finished with a simple “The End.”

Which was foolish. Utterly foolish. Because every time Gwen thought on it, she knew to her very core that it was not “The End.” Just because the beautiful princess married the handsome prince did not make it “The End.” No, in fact, it made it a beginning. Where was the story about the pair of dafties consolidating power between their lands? Where was the story about their first children? About heirs and lineage and all those stupid questions Gwen herself had heard at court more than once when her mother's brother (mother constantly scolded her to call him uncle but Gwen was quite content in their mutual dislike for one another and loath to call the man something as familiar as “uncle”) visited and set about his habit of demanding to know how her father planned to continue his line without a son. (Apparently her mother's home country did not allow queens to rule without a husband to rule for her. If there was a word stronger than “foolish,” Gwen desperately wanted to know it for “foolish” seemed barely to touch on her mother's brother's foolishness and supplementing the difference between the work and the evidence before her with eye rolling strained her eyes and made her dizzy with the turning of them. Not to mention the stinging in her arm from her mother's subtle swatting when the queen caught her daughter being so blatantly disrespectful of the man.)

Gwen knew first hand that her mother and father's wedding had not been “The End” for them, even if they were quite in love and quite happy with each other. The “The End”s of her mother's tales were perhaps even worse as Gwen was nearly always quite enthralled with the characters in those. So the prince had died and the princess was left to weep over his body? That's hardly “The End!” The princess must find a new husband or take the throne for herself. There would be great upheaval if the prince was an only child! How would popular opinion effect the princess? What enemies that her prince had made would come to strike at her? Which of them would try to turn oily tongued in win her favor to manipulate her in an unfamiliar land? Would the princess see through these tricks or fall for them? If the prince was not an only child, the princess would need to know her marriage contract very well to determine whether the marriage was truly voided or if she defaulted to the next brother. “The End” rarely ever seemed an accurate description of where these tales chose to be left off. They had always frustrated Gwen a little (not enough to stop requesting bed time stories, but enough to think on in the morning). Gwen often dreamed of the events after “The End”ings. The practical matters that come after long adventures and quests.

Congratulations, you've slain a dragon. What about the body? Can't just let it rot there, taking up valuable land and possibly spreading disease in its decay. Can't cut through its hide, either (wouldn't have been half as interesting trying to kill the thing if it was so easy to dismember). And what of its horde? If the kingdom is small, a horde like that could be a great boon but would undoubtedly draw larger enemies to the gates to seize the treasures. Do you hire mercenaries (costly and not at all faithful), hide the treasure throughout the land? Spread the wealth with loyal allies? Gwen's dreams were full to bursting with logistics. It often greatly amused her mother to hear them the next morning. Her mother had often called her “the most fanciful practical child I have ever met” through her laughter and it had not felt like a quite insult, as many things people said to her often did. Instead, Gwen had beamed and puffed up her chest, taking pride in being “fancifully practical” even if she didn't quite understand it.

But now... now there was no one to tell her dreams to. No one to take amusement in her detailed planning of dragon corpse removal or detailed contract negotiating of the marriage contracts of mourning princesses or the difficulties of heir visitation between merfolk and humans.

Because the queen was dead and Gwen was finally beginning to understand the meaning of “The End.” It was not, she held firm, perhaps as final as it sounded. For things continued on (she, herself, continued on despite the missing bits in her now) but they were not... not quite the same. The story and adventures of Queen Isolt had ended and that—Gwen thought with iron clad firmness as pain seared through her and tears started down her face again and the fine lines she traced her finger over that turned “The End” into a work of art in its own right began to blur through the salty water filling her gaze—deserved a big, bold, painstakingly detailed inscription on its very own page at the end of the book.

Whatever happened next would not be the same. Every day, every minute, every moment of life after this would not be the same as the days and minutes and moments that had been full of her mother. Another book was already being written, another story forming (hers, her father's, her kingdom's) but they would not be the same. They would not be the same story as the stories that held her mother. And it was not fair that she would never hear her mother's voice or see her face or play with the soft strands of her hair but no one had promised her fairness. Fairness was a human invention, its definition changing constantly from one land to the next, from one human to the next. So it would hurt. It would hurt for the rest of her life. And she would spend years crying over it, whether her eyes shed the tears or not. But her mother's story had ended and, Gwen conceded, it very much deserved a “The End.”


End file.
